


A Heart the Size of Arizona

by Kyra



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: F/M, Flash Fic, Friends With Benefits, Future Fic, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-18 02:00:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2331071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyra/pseuds/Kyra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time you slept with him, he wasn't there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Heart the Size of Arizona

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dayspassquicker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dayspassquicker/gifts).



> Written in one day for [trope/kink bingo 5 fics in 5 days insanity](http://kyrafic.tumblr.com/post/97853137002/things-annakovsky-and-i-have-been-complaining-back).
> 
> For [dayspassquicker](http://archiveofourown.org/users/dayspassquicker/pseuds/dayspassquicker), who's been lovingly peer pressuring me into this for years. 
> 
> Goes a/u sometime after All Good Things. Canon relationship timelines handwave handwave. Title from [Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell, by Marty McConnell](http://peelsofpoetry.tumblr.com/post/34524527364/frida-kahlo-to-marty-mcconnell-by-marty-mcconnell).

When you remember, it's like this:

It's late, the room dark except for the light over the poker table and Data's the second-to-last to leave. Will is standing by the door, waving everyone out and you're still at the table, shuffling and splitting the deck of cards. 

The feeling you remember is: when the door swishes shut and he turns to you, grin slipping over his face, easy. You keep shuffling the cards, not watching your hands. You cut the deck, tap it twice and don't look away.

\--

The first time you slept with him, he wasn't there. The first time you slept with him, there was someone else in his body and everything felt familiar-but-strange-but-familiar. Odan's hands when you closed your eyes; Will's face when you opened them.

(It's years before you're both drunk enough that you ask him what it was like; _really_ like.) ("Spotty," he says lazily, head rolled back, glass empty in his hand. He tries to piece it together for you. Long after you can't remember the specifics, you remember the feeling you got from it; like looking at something through trees from the window of a shuttle. Light and darkness flickering.)

\--

The first time you slept with _him_ , it had been a long week. A long month in a long year. Days you felt you'd been on this ship forever. Days you lost count of how many times you'd had to call time of death for an ensign on the wrong away mission, some 

You know you signed on for this, but some days you want to take off your lab coat, your uniform, your skin and just be someone else. And he smelled good and he was there and you knew him. Liked him. He could be someone you went to school with, someone you met at a coffee shop, a bar. Someone from a world where life was easy and uncomplicated and he could grab your ass and _lift_ you--

\--

Once because he was Odan. Once because he was there. And then because it was a habit; something good, something almost too easy. Most of all, maybe, you liked having a secret. Sitting in the senior staff meeting, not looking at him once, until you did. Still sore in a good way from last night and this morning. Like there was a life where you weren't anyone's mother or department head or widow or dedicated Starfleet officer. Where you don't have to be as earnest, as complicated as everyone else in the room: Jean-Luc and Deanna and Worf.

\--

One fact you roll around on your tongue sometimes: you've been unmarried so much longer than you ever were. You were young when you married Jack and so young when he died. And then you weren't ever really young again. But you had yourself and you had Wesley and you made it through one day and another day and you turned that into a life. One where sometimes you were lonely and sometimes you weren't but it was _yours_. Your spaces, your days.

Will was mild enough not to mind that you rarely stayed the night. Canny enough not to ask why.

It was enough, mostly, to let him take you apart, out of your head, and afterward sit naked in his bed laughing about the ship's gossip. The girl Reg Barclay had a crush on. Data's culinary explorations. With your shirt off and him pretending not to stare -- or giving up pretending. That grin again.

\--

The last time you slept with him was your last night on the ship. He was three days into being captain. You had twelve hours left as CMO. So many of the crew were new by then -- the ensigns younger every year -- that you didn't need a party or week of goodbyes. Instead you find yourself in his quarters, whiskey from Guinan's very old stash humming on your tongue. His stupid trombone in the corner and that smirk like he's going to say this is for old time's sake. You had to kiss him just to shut him up.

It's early when you leave: pull on your uniform in the dark of his room, get a sonic shower in your quarters, find your way to the transporter room with your bag, step out of this life and into the next one.

\--

You moved to San Francisco when you were nineteen. There was such a thrill to the world then; the hills, the cycles of fog, your new cadet's uniform.

Coming back, you're two people: that younger you, the girl you feel such a protective fondness for, and yourself now. It's like overlaying two sets of pictures in your mind. There were all the adventures you'd dreamed of having -- and the ones you've now _had_. The planets, the battles, the research papers when you found the time.

Your new office overlooks the whole bay. Twice a day you look up and get a surprised thrill through your chest. All that space and light -- and it's yours. Just like this job and its fascinating problems and its less fascinating routines that still let you go home tired and satisfied at the end of every day. You're so lucky; sometimes it's almost hard to grasp.

\--

It's fall when Jean-Luc gets reassigned to Starfleet Headquarters; moves to the city. Winter when he starts getting lunch with you twice a week. Spring when he walks you home in the chilly evening and slips his hand into yours before you know it's happening. Still spring when he does it again and kisses you on your doorstep: like you're fifteen, like it's some other century, like you haven't known each other for 30 ridiculous years.

Everything goes quickly after that. Your lives clicking together in a new pattern; it's easy. It works.

You worry that it will seem like you were waiting for him. You wake up very early and think about it sometimes, lying in your high bed looking out at the blue dark while he's asleep beside you. After a while you realize maybe, actually, you were.

\--

He marries Deanna. You don't marry Jean-Luc. 

Maybe you would, if he hadn't shown you all those years ago the future he'd visited. Where you have a ship and his name and an ex-husband whose brain is shivering into fragments. It's not how causality works; you know that. You're a scientist. But you still keep saying no.

\--

It's not a bad life at all, even a little. You had the stars. And now you get this.

\--

You have dinner for everyone when they're in town; your bare feet and the windows open, humming while you pull it together. Jean-Luc makes a salad. You feel like laughing at how _old_ you are, living exactly the kind of domestic life you spent your whole youth running away from.

Deanna's curled up on the couch and Will is stretched out beside her, an ankle on his knee, arm spanning the back of the couch. Jean-Luc is telling a story about an admiral and two very lost and flustered cadets and you're all laughing, wine glasses filled and emptied and refilled. The look Will gives you when he catches your eye is warm, almost fond. Your husband, his wife and somewhere far far below a very old story about the two of you; alone together no matter what room you were in.

The moment flickers by, like it always does, like something that probably happened only in your mind. You open another bottle of wine. Tuck your feet under you when you curl back into your chair. When you look at him again, it's like nothing ever happened between you at all.


End file.
